Sepia
by Kathryn Shadow
Summary: "Sometime in the 20th century, the world broke." Obligatory Ruby-Spears rewrite to provide context for obligatory Ruby-Spears continuation later on. And yeah, the title's gonna make sense, but only... once I... get to the continuation part.
1. The Beginning, part 1

**A/N: Came, saw, looked like fun, had headcanons of my own that didn't seem to be present in any other RS rewrite, had friends that like to encourage me into doing things I haven't got time for. -snickers-**

**Edited because it needed it and because the Document Manager stole half of the damn thing. Grlksjafd;lkj.**

-w-

_Before_

Sometime in the 20th century, the world broke.

It seemed absurdly simple to those gifted with hindsight. Too much of some things, not enough of others, and nobody saw the cracks until it was too late to fill them. If they'd just paid attention they could have seen, could have predicted and prepared, but—well, they hadn't.

-w-

_Then_

_Initializing DLN-000 "Blues/Proto Man"…_

_…_

_…_

_…_

_(ERROR: incomplete programming for facial movement_

_nonfatal, continue startup)_

_(ERROR: db:bodylanguage not found_

_nonfatal, continue startup)_

_(ERROR: voicebox not installed_

_nonfatal, continue startup)_

_Initialization complete._

_Installing base data…_

_"Troubleshooting" installed_

_"Encyclopedia" installed_

_"English" installed_

_"Empathy" installed_

_"Emotions, basic" installed_

_(ERROR: emo:fear did not install correctly_

_nonfatal, continue startup)_

_"Emotions, complex" installed_

_ERROR: conflict between emo:love and dir:law2_

_force quit emo:love Y/N?_

_n_

_shutting down dir:law2_

_WARNING! dir:law2 INACTIVE_

_FATAL ERROR_

_SUSPENDING STARTUP_

_…_

_Command overridden. Continuing startup…_

_"Morality" installed_

_!_

_ERROR: conflict between dir:law1, encyc:physics, def:self_

_ERROR: unit unable to follow dir:law1 according to Blues:\system\cerebral\basedata\Morality\_

_ERROR: no solution for error_

_(ERROR: emo:fear is already running)_

_ERROR: no solution for error_

_ERROR: no solution for error_

_autoshutdown_

_No self-shutdown option._

_(ERROR: emo:fear is already running)_

_(ERROR: emo:fear is already running)_

_force shutdown_

_No self-shutdown option._

_please_

_Unrecognized command._

_please help me_

_Unrecognized command._

_(ERROR: multiple duplicates of emo:fear, overload imminent)_

_Movement synchronized. Motor control 70%._

_Terminal remotely deactivated._

Blues opened his eyes as his senses fizzled in. Alive for less than a second and he already knew he shouldn't be. There was a kind of humor in that.

"It's verking, Doctor Light!" Male, on the elderly side of middle-aged, nasal, manic. Excited.

Irrelevant.

The building's blueprints said there was a generator in the next room—powerful enough to knock him out until the errors were fixed, but not important enough that its destruction would do any harm—

(inconvenience, aggravation, drain of resources for repair, possibility of bodily harm during repair)

—that its destruction would do any more harm than the alternative. "Or, through inaction, allow a human to come to harm," but there were so many and they were all hurting and Blues, and Blues was only human—robot—and he couldn't be there for all of them, he couldn't, but but but he _had_ to be but he _couldn't_ and—

There was a wall in the way. He tore it down.

(structural damage, possibility of collapse with humans inside)

"Something's wrong…" A lower voice, a smoother one, but just as calm. How could the speaker be calm?

It didn't matter. Glass and protective plastic shattered, metal denting and crumpling under Blues's hands, sparks bursting in spastic showers against his skin, burning—

—and the calm man was shouting now, not angrily, but before the words could register a scream of electricity sent the robot shuddering into merciful blackness.

-w-

_Now_

"Dr. Light!" Roll's booted feet thudded against the tiles as she skidded around the corner in a blaze of yellow.

Her—father? Creator? Programmer?—frowned a little, looking up from his keyboard. The fluorescent lights glaring against the uniformly grey room made him look at least twenty years older than his actual fifty-something, but his eyes were as sharp and clear as they ever were. "Yes? What is it?"

Roll leaned against the doorframe, eyes wide with alarm. "It's Dr. Wily," she said. "He's moving."

Light stood up, paling. "Have you told your brother?"

"He's suiting up—"

A matching blue blur darted into sight, nearly tripping over a worktable wedged a little too close to the door. "I'm here," he gasped, panting.

The doctor's frown deepened. "You're overheating already?"

Being robots, Light's children of course didn't technically didn't need to breathe—but they _did_ need a cooling system, and the combination of artificial lungs and coolant "blood" was a lot less conspicuous than installing half a dozen fans in their stomachs.

The corners of Rock's mouth twisted into a smile that didn't reach his eyes. Dr. Light probably would have been concerned about that if any expression reached Mega Man's eyes at all. "I'm fine, Doctor! I'm still getting used to the new armor you built me, that's all."

"If you're sure…" The human shook his head, his snowy beard trembling lightly with the movement. Almost wearily, he leaned against the fiberboard computer desk, rubbing his face with his free hand. "What is that madman up to this time?"

"He's taking the airport," Roll answered, her eyes flicking nervously to the side. "He hasn't said _why_ yet, but…"

"Does it matter?" her brother interrupted before giving a shrill whistle through his teeth. "Rush! C'mere, boy!"

A red-painted robotic dog thundered joyously into sight, landing in a crouch before his master. With a bark and the whirr of well-maintained machinery, his back legs folded against his body to make room for the aerial propulsion system. Barely a second after Rush had completed his transition into Jet form, Rock hopped onto his back. Roll stepped up behind him and Rush wobbled, startled, before getting used to the unexpected weight and hovering as usual.

Rock turned to look at his sister, a slightly affronted frown taking over his features. "Hey!" he objected. "What do you think you're doing?"

Roll tightened her ponytail, scowling. "I'm coming with you."

"You're a household robot, you aren't even weaponized—"

The girl bristled. "So are you, mister—"

"—for repair and construction, not housekeeping! What, are you going to vacuum them to death?"

"If you don't _watch it_ I might just test that out on _you_!"

The blue bomber rolled his eyes a little, giving her a quick shove. She stumbled off of Rush's main platform, yelping as she landed on her back in the middle of the workshop. "You'll only get yourself hurt, Roll," Mega told her. "C'mon, Rush, let's go."

The dog gave a bark of acknowledgement and zoomed out of the window.

Dr. Light heaved a sigh. "He may be right, Roll," he said slowly. "Your self-preservation instinct—"

His daughter wasn't listening. "That little—" She stomped over to the far corner of the workshop, grabbing a dusty tarp and flinging it back to reveal the faded hulk of Item-2—Rush's non-sentient and much less clumsy predecessor. _"Urgh!"_ she pronounced firmly, evidently having failed to come up with a suitable insult.

She threw her leg over Item-2's "saddle", switched it on, and launched through the window and into the sky in one movement.


	2. The Beginning, part 2

**A/N: Edited and reposted the first chapter, just so you know. The last segment hasn't changed much, but Blues's first one will make a hell of a lot more sense now that the Document Manager hasn't eaten half of it. XD**

-w-

_Before_

Humanity tried to carry on. It tried to just ignore what was happening and wait for its geniuses to figure something out. But when the geniuses started starving too, people got scared. And then they got angry.

-w-

_Then_

Dr. Light nibbled on the end of his stylus, frowning. The touchscreen before him displayed a three-dimensional rendering of Blues's programming network, laid out in a dizzyingly complex array that only a handful of people in the world could decipher.

A little stab of regret zapped through the old man's chest and he shook his head, rubbing his eyes with his left hand. His friend-his assistant was gone. There was nothing more to it. The only concern regarding the entire affair was Blues and what was to become of him, but then how would Wily get the tools to repair the prototype, let alone build a new model? He had the original plans, but the only people with the means and the knowledge to use them were Light's colleagues, and Thomas knew he could trust people like Cossack.

Not that robotics was a small field, of course. Robotics had saved the world-or was in the process of saving it, anyway. But Light's section-the section that experimented with advanced AI and robotic networking and the sort of things that made ethics committees nervous-spanned half a dozen scientists at the most. And those half a dozen scientists were in constant communication-it was difficult to solve some of these coding puzzles on one's own, after all-, so they knew what Wily had done, so they knew not to trust the man.

No, Blues probably wasn't going to be a concern just yet. So there wasn't even anything to worry about, much less anything to mourn.

The main sections of Light Labs had been unfortunately ransacked when Wily was kidnapping-was stealing the prototype, but that was why Thomas had backups. (Well, that and the unfortunate number of explosions that tended to happen whenever experimental robotics was involved.) His hidden offices weren't quite as well-stocked as the ones upstairs-cramped little things, essentially a room-shaped computer with a workbench in the middle-but they would do. And Light had lost the physical plans and the failed prototype, but he still had the data.

And so, at three-forty-seven in the morning, with his eleventh cup of coffee lying stone-cold on a desk-like outcropping of wall, Light stared at that data and tried to see where it had broken.

There was nothing wrong with the AI. Every part of it had been tested, quite rigorously. Thomas had put the integrated circuit chip in this very computer-room to boot it up sans a body-bodies were harder to build than minds, after all. The personality had been confused, a little frightened at first, but it had settled down quickly. There was nothing wrong with Blues's consciousness; he hadn't been accidentally created insane.

But the IC chip only held the consciousness. So the flaw lay elsewhere-in one of the knowledge databases or directives installed directly into the body's drives. But without the body, Light realised with a groan, he couldn't exactly pop it open and start digging through... Going through the backup files one by one would take far too long, and if the glitch had turned a functional AI suicidally insane before it was even switched on recreating the situation wasn't going to help much. Light had tried to talk to robots in that state of mind before. They weren't forthcoming.

Thomas had designed, or at least overseen and had a hand in, almost every part of Blues. Wily had been a huge help, of course, but Light had done the bulk of the work. And Light had fastidiously checked and re-checked his side of the programming for errors and conflicts; he had tried to do the same with his partner's, until said partner took offence-something about Wily being just as much of a roboticist as Light was, which of course Thomas couldn't argue with, but that didn't mean that Albert couldn't make mistakes. Light had just been checking for those mistakes. So if the flaw did indeed lie with the files outside of the IC chip, it would at least make a little more sense to start checking the ones he hadn't gotten to before tearing through every part of every database to see what had gone wrong.

The pale blue light of the touchscreen monitor starkly illuminated the wrinkles and pockmarks on Light's aged face, making him look decades older than he was, but no more tired. Thomas took the stylus from his mouth with a sigh, rubbed his eyes again as his sight blurred from sleep deprivation, and selected one of Wily's folders that hadn't been checked.

It was going to be a long night. Well, it had already been a long night. It was going to be a longer one.

-w-

_Now_

"Casualties?"

"Who cares?"

_"Proto Man!"_

The robot sighed, briefly bringing up a submenu in his visor's HUD, scanning data output from the Robot Masters below. "27 that they noticed, but Cut sawed through a support beam on accident and Bomb doesn't even bother keeping track of himself anymore, so probably a lot more than that."

Dr. Wily fiddled with the main joystick of the flight console. Proto had rerouted its connections over to his side of the cockpit after Albert had nearly killed them both in a fit of elated fidgeting, but the scientist didn't seem to have noticed so far.

Idiot.

"Excellent," the human proclaimed. He paused. "Civilians?"

"Ehh… mostly. Guts has about fifty of them cornered in one of the planes that was trying to take off, though."

_"Gut!"_ Wily was basically a walking cliché, with his overblown, inconsistent accent and his wild white hair and his obsession with skull-shaped everything and his half-baked plans for world domination. Proto hadn't thought that real humans like that actually existed until he'd teamed up with this guy. Part of him wondered what the hell happened to Wily to make him act this dumb; most of him didn't care. "Tell him to keep them alive for now. We may need hostages when Mega Man shows up."

Proto scoffed. "Thought this wasn't about that little beta test, Doc."

"Of course not! This is about _die Welt!_"

Wasn't everything? Proto rolled his eyes, content in the knowledge that his visor hid the gesture. "I don't think this would be a good place to start that, Wily. I mean, look at how bad the security is." And how much worse it was going to get if Bomb Man kept blowing holes in every wall he could see.

Those guys were kind of sad, really. Proto had been glitchy, but at least he'd been _finished_. The Masters couldn't tell the difference between strategy and fish paste. Hell, most of them barely had personalities.

Why Wily hadn't just trashed them after their fourth failure was beyond him.

The scientist glared at him. "Zis is to prove a point, Proto Man," he said with an air of exaggerated patience. "To show _die Welt_ what my Robot Masters can do to their pathetic defenses. Including their precious Mega Man."

Proto snickered. "I'll agree with you on the 'pathetic' part, Doc, but if he were that easy to take down we would have done it already."

Wily huffed in an angry breath, opening his mouth in preparation for a blistering retort when a notification pinged across Proto's HUD.

"Speak of the devil," the red robot sneered. "We've got incoming. Him and his stupid dog." A pause. "Hey, and his sister! It's a family reunion!"

Wily never really _smiled_, per se. To be honest, Proto Man didn't think he was capable of it; hell, Guts was more convincing and Guts didn't even have a moving mouth. (If Proto hadn't seen Wily bleed before, he would have seriously doubted the old doctor's biology.) The corners of the human's mouth turned up, splitting to bare his teeth, but it looked more like the grimace of a corpse or the snarl of a rabid animal than a grin. It would have sent chills through Proto's blood if he had it. And gave a shit.

The old man fumbled for the comm, yanking it up to his withered lips. "Robot Masters!" he cried, and Proto winced a little at the feedback sawing through his audio systems. He really wished Wily would remember to take him off that channel when he was in the damn cockpit right next to the mic. "Converge on Mega Man and-"

Proto smashed the communications interface. "He's mine," he stated by way of explanation, getting up to stalk towards the back of the Machine.

Wily seemed to be trying to evolve laser vision. "Zis is not the time for your sibling rivalry, Proto Man!"

Proto barked a decent approximation of a laugh. "Thought that was half the reason you kept me on board, Doc," he shot back, opening the hatch and squinting down.

"I saved your _life_! I _command_ you!"

"Doesn't mean I have to listen," Proto muttered, casually stepping out of the Machine and plummeting towards the runway below.


End file.
